Greenwashing: a legitimate tactic or just plain deceptive?

What is a "green car"? It's an oxymoron, that's what it is. No car is unequivocally friendly to the natural environment.
 
The federal government-run Green Vehicle Guide estimates that CO2 from cars makes up about 8 per cent of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions. Cars also make a substantial contribution to photochemical smog and other urban air pollution, some of which are associated with public health problems.

And that, of course, is merely the tip of the warmth-berg, before we look into what it takes to dig the ore, smelt the metal and glass, harvest and process the rubber, find crude oil reserves, suck them out of the ground, turn them into plastics and fuels, power the production plants, fuel the transportation of raw materials and finished product...

The most an automaker can claim legitimately is that its product is less hostile to Mother Earth than its competitor's. Or, in the language they prefer to use, more friendly -- an issue that came up in New Zealand recently, when its Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints against Honda's description of its Jazz as "environmentally friendly" (it required the company to change it to "environmentally friendlier").

It ain't what you say...
So in the heat of the current climate of high competition, it's useful to note not just what carmakers are saying, but the way they're saying it... Because, under the stewardship of the experts of the advertising and marketing industry, the semantics can get very slippery indeed.

Ayman Guirguis, competition and consumer protection partner with law firm Blake Dawson, says regulators have been toughening up on green and carbon-related claims since mid-late 2007.

"There's been a global ISO standard in place for some years, since the turn of the century, but they've become much keener on enforcing it more recently."

He cites the GM Saab case as Australia's best example. "It's certainly the best known -- their claims were really out there."

Under the strapline "Grrrrrreen", with the call to action "Shift to Neutral", Saab claimed that "Every Saab is green. With carbon emissions neutral across the entire Saab range". The campaign was based on a promise to plant 17 native trees in the first year after the sale of each car.

"They [Saab] put it in a way that inferred that would carbon offset the car for its entire life. In reality, those 17 trees would offset it for the first year of its life."

The ACCC found it misleading, the Federal court upheld the finding and the campaign was killed.

"It gave the reader an impression that was unacceptably removed from reality," Guirguis says.

It was a lesson from which organisers of the V8 Supercars racing series learned -- but not enough.

"They did the maths a bit better," says Guirguis. "They calculated the total emissions from every car, every race, every practice session and so on, including things like transport to and from races. That gave them a figure they turned into the Racing Green Program, for which they calculated the number of trees they'd have to plant."

Which sounded great until the ACCC pointed out that the trees being planted in any given year will take their entire lifespan -- in all likelihood several decades -- to absorb the CO2 emissions from just one year's worth of competition.

The court imposed an enforceable undertaking -- a resolution between organisers and the ACCC that V8 Supercars would make that explicit.

"When they make claims about carbon offsets, they need to make explicit that the trees they plant would only absorb that level of carbon emissions over their lifespan," says Guirguis.

"So before they let these kinds of claims influence their choices, it's worth digging around a bit and getting some detailed explanations about the actual impact of the promises they're hearing."

That's when any explicit claims are being made. Which is often not the case. How's this for a free association exercise? It comes care of a sponsored link we found in the course of our Googlings: "Think about the environment in the fuel efficient Toyota Prius". 

"Yeah, that's pretty clever," says Guirguis. "I mean, you can tell consumers to think about anything while they're driving, can't you? And they're kind of protected by the medium -- with a sponsored links, you have to click through to determine the substance behind the claim."

Around the same time, we found another Google sponsored link headlined "Environment Friendly Car", leading to a site for Peugeot's diesel lineup.  That, says Guirguis, would not wash in some countries now.

The most often cited example of such hardline crackdown is Norway's Consumer Ombudsman, which has placed an outright ban on car companies making any such claim, on the simple basis that no car's existence can be claimed to be of any net benefit to the environment.

It's a notion that fuelled a massive expansion of two tightly interlinked industries, hallmarks of the late 20th Century: pop-psychology and marketing.

Where does this fit in the auto market? Climate change and all things green are issues charged with emotion. It starts with that primal motivating force so richly exploited by both those industries: fear.

Climate change is scary (it used to be referred to generically as "global warming" until Bush administration pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz famously set about neutralising the term.) It appears to threaten our very existence, and not in some far-off way affecting our children's children. Three days after Victoria's Black Saturday fires took more than 200 lives, an opinion piece appeared in the Fairfax papers saying the firestorms and the accompanying heatwave were no aberration but "the face of climate change in our part of the world".

Layered over the fear is desire for the approval of our peers, and a commensurate anxiety about the prospect of disapproval. All of which leaves the populace more vulnerable than normal to all manner of claims to greenliness and godliness. Some are 100 per cent certifiably true. Others are rubbish. Most sit in the grey space between.

All, however, are worthy of a healthy scepticism and scrutiny. And there are plenty of government and non-government authorities and assorted interest groups stepping up to do just that.

Over the last couple of years we've witnessed a major shift in the marketing of cars -- a strategic overhaul evidencing that while Al Gore lost an election to George W Bush, he's emerged victorious on the much bigger long-term issue of climate change. 

The horseless carriage has been lumped with a hefty share of the blame. For auto companies, the focus group results are in and the trend is clear. A growing majority of consumers believe climate change is here, now, and that it poses a serious threat. To ignore it, therefore, is commercial suicide. 

ExxonMobil discovered exactly that last year, with a massive shareholder uprising against its bulldozer policy of continued denial. With estimates putting the atmospheric impact of its total production output at around 500 million tonnes of carbon a year, it was hardly surprising that the world's largest oil company had for years spearheaded the disparagement of climate change, earning it the title of "Climate Criminal Number One" from Greenpeace.

The board found itself facing a hefty bloc of shareholders declaring the company face reality or face extinction. The incumbents won the vote to maintain the status quo last year, but narrowly enough that early in 2009 ExxonMobil executed an apparent 180-degree policy turn and announced it was joining the Gore/Obama camp favouring a carbon tax.

Being seen to be concerned
So at individual and corporate level, there's plenty of anxiety in evidence about winning and losing the esteem of our peers and shareholders.  Which explains why it's not just a matter of being concerned -- it's paramount to be seen as concerned.

The evidence is there in the way new cars are marketed and reported in the media. It used to be simple: more was more. The hierarchy of automotive virtue and joy was expressed in excesses of cylinders and kilowatts and cubic centimetres and torque and muscle and glorious exhaust notes. Build quality was assayed in tonnage.

And while fuel consumption figures rated a mention, it was only in the context of personal cost at the pump. The finest and most desirable of carriages were, pretty much without exception, prodigiously hungry at the production plant and thirsty on the road.

Now, however, it's all about getting more out of less: less valuable resources going in one end, less nasty warm flatus emerging from the other. The current marketing imperative is visible social responsibility -- being seen to do the right thing by Mother Earth.

Witness Bentley's Continental Supersports: yes, it's the most powerful Bentley ever. But look, they trumpet -- you can run it on E85!

Now, automakers are tripping over each other to be cleanest and greenest. And that, inevitably, means consumers will come across some pretty outlandish claims, both explicit and implicit.

Unsurprisingly for the tall poppy of the green car industry, Toyota's powerful, big-budget marketing arm and its numerous agency outposts have attracted plenty of scrutiny and criticism along the way.

Not happy with that all-embracing "up to" term, the ASA questioned the "up to one tonne less" claim for the amount of wriggle room it left the advertisers. It also found the choice of comparative product less than compelling and pointed out that the 20,000 km annual usage pertained to the US -- 50 per cent more than the 13,440km UK average. It required the claims be modified before further broadcast.

But it's in the nature of advertising to skate close to the wind at times. As the media palette expands and the intensifying white noise makes it harder to achieve what's known among marketers as 'cut-through', agencies are more likely to see what they can get away with on behalf of their client, especially in an environment as fraught and charged with competition as the auto market.

Equal but opposite forces
But rest assured, it's not all one way. There's plenty of what Toyota might complain of as tall poppy syndrome in evidence, both corporate and anti corporate. Last year's famous Top Gear test questioned the true green value of a hybrid car with a nickel-metal hydride battery whose production matrix left a scar on Mother Earth commensurate with an amputation.

There's a Californian subsidiary of Friends of the Earth called the Bluewater Network that's taken Toyota to task for green-marketing the Prius while simultaneously lobbying the Schwarzenegger administration not to tighten up emissions regulations.

In early 2007, an outfit called CNW Marketing Research raised hell with the release of a paper headlined Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal. There's 450-plus pages of it, but the bit that's sparked furious debate is the claim that, thanks largely to that not-so-green battery pack and its complex production process the Prius consumes $3.25 worth of energy per mile for the duration of its life -- well up on GM's Hummer H2 at $3.03 and H3 at $1.95.

And, it says, that's taking into account a much shorter lifespan for the Prius -- around 175,000 km, compared to what it calls an "industry straight average" of 288,000 km, and 610,000 for the Hummer H1.

Fortunately they subheaded it "The non-technical report", because it's achieved almost standup comic status for its unfathomable, make-it-up-as-you-go approach to science. And spelling! Detractors have gleefully pointed to its measurement of energy in "gigajeulles".

And if CNW Marketing Research has an answer to why Toyota offers a 240,000km warranty on the battery and other components of a car likely to hit the junkyard before 200,000, they've forgotten to put it in.

Of course, there's a cauldron of blogospheric polemic available from every point on the broad spectrum of mental health. Suffice to say in response to it all that new technology has to start somewhere and the day will come when we waft along in our lithium-ion and hydrogen fuel cell powered cars laughing about those clunky old NiMH batteries they had round back round the turn of the century.

For now, though, they're the available option. They are recyclable and the Prius did, after all, top the US EPA and Energy Department's fuel economy ratings list -- again -- earlier this year.

So whose claims can you trust?
That's hard to say for sure, given how easy it is to slip up, even for those whose charter is undeniably dispassionate. Virtually any claim can be nitpicked and questioned.

Choice, the nation's acknowledged leader in consumer advocacy once known as the Australian Consumer Association, shows how tricky it can be negotiating the claims surrounding the greenness of cars in its eponymous journal's 2005 Prius vs Civic Hybrid test summary. It says that "hybrid cars conserve petrol resources" and "the two hybrid cars available in Australia are easy to drive and use much less fuel than comparable non-hybrids."

What eludes them here is the list of exceptions and mitigations traceable back to that old caveat: "under ideal conditions". Those flavour-of-the-decade wags at Top Gear showed how the Prius can be thirstier than the decidedly not-comparable 4.0 litre V8 BMW M3 in an un-Prius-friendly driving environment -- namely, for extended periods at high speed.

We can support their contention, albeit without the Clarksonian drama and schadenfreude after a run down the Hume from Sydney to Melbourne in a Lexus RX400h. It produced fuel consumption figures perfectly in line with a well sorted, high-efficiency petrol V6. Which, under freeway conditions, it mostly is.

Choice also comments on the Civic's auto stop-start system, which it mentions is overridden when the air conditioning is on (something we found when driving our own long-term Civic). With many an Australian driver using air-con almost constantly, chances are many an Australian Civic Hybrid's auto stop-start function would reside in a state of almost constant dormancy. And so it goes.

The crucial point for consumers is to match purchase with purpose and not get distracted by multifarious claims.

The guide arrives at each star rating using data from two sources: a greenhouse rating derived from fuel consumption data displayed on a mandatory label on all new cars in showrooms, and an air pollution rating measuring other exhaust nasties like carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbons and, in the case of diesels, particulates.

Each car's overall rating hails from the emission standard to which it is certified. Emission standards are derived from a mix of model weight, fuel type and intended purpose -- passengers or goods.

Australia's high import rates mean many of the cars we take here benefit from higher standards in place overseas. Anything that passes under Euro V, for example, will address Australian requirements, delivering it the benefit of a higher GVG rating.

As this is a third party rating, GVG is the rating greencarsales.com.au adopts to classify new and used cars. It's not perfect, but at this point in time it is the sole credible third-party rating Down Under.

World Green COTY
Eligibility for the World Green Car of the Year Award is contingent on a mix of recency and adherence to cleanliness and frugality benchmarks.

The award -- part of the World COTY program -- is run by a non-profit corporation under the stewardship of a committee of auto journalists from Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America. Its choices are made free of influence by any publication, auto show, automaker or any other commercial interest. It simply leverages the experience and expertise member jurors have garnered by their participation in other auto award programs from their own regions.

Each candidate model must be all-new or substantially revised. If it's on the market, it needs to have arrived in at least one major market between January 1 and December 31 of the preceding year. Prototypes and experimental vehicles not yet on sale need to demonstrate potential near-future applicability -- they have to be near enough to sale for 10 vehicles or more to be released for individual or press fleet evaluations.
 
All candidates need to fulfil at least one of a number of judgement criteria:
>> Tailpipe emissions matching or bettering leading-edge Euro (eg Euro VI), California PZEV or US EPA standards.
>> Fuel consumption matching or bettering 4.5 L/100km combined cycle (55:45 pc city:highway ratio) or equivalent (on blended fuel for flex-fuel cars).
>> Use of a major advanced powerplant technology (beyond engine componentry) aimed specifically at increasing the vehicle's environmental responsibility (e.g. hybrid, fuel cell, etc.) And flex-fuel candidates will only be considered if they're on sale in countries where both fuels are widely available.

Image: 'Well, at least he drives a Prius' ad by David Krulik